He reeked of feeble mortality.
He always had, she knew he had since the first time she had met him in the hospital. But it was easier, then, to pretend it was the smell of the bleached linoleum floor.
It drove him to the point that he could no longer feel the dull hardwood floors under his feet or what her hair felt like between his cold fingers, even though he knew it was the only way she’d fall asleep without worrying about him.
He remembered the time she woke up next to him and how her smile faded to remind him of the darkness under his eyes and the shadows in his face.
It drove him to stop looking in mirrors and to stop glancing down at puddles on a sidewalk. All they could ever reflect was a ghost that light could no longer penetrate and hours bleached that more of him than anyone could account for.
Warmth no longer ran in his veins.
He told her once that he wished it hadn’t ended up like this, but a nosebleed cut off whatever else he thought she needed to hear. Instead he thought they should give up, and that she should have given up on him the moment they walked out of the hospital with bloodstained clothes.
But he knew if she ever gave up on him that there’d be nothing left to hold in what was left under his skin. They treated each other like morphine and Band-Aids, drunk and dizzy with a timid and fleeting hope that one of the two would make it better until the bandage was peeled away and the morphine wore off to reveal another bruise on white skin. She would never stop pretending Band-Aids and morphine could heal him, just like he would never stop pretending that it didn’t shatter his bones every time she said goodnight and I’ll see you in the morning.
Instead, he took his fear and folded it into a paper flower and she put it in her hair.
